Son, Who is begotten, were of the same essence as the Father Who begets, there must be both an unbegotten and a begotten element in God. The essence of the Father and of the Son must therefore be absolutely dissimilar. And as Their essence, so also is Their knowledge of Themselves different. Each knows Himself as He is, and not as the other. The one knows Himself as unbegotten, the other as begotten. Since, therefore, the Son did not share in any way the essence of the Father, what is His relation to God, and to what does He owe His origin? Eunomius's answer lay in a distinction between the essence (οὐσία) and the energy (ἐνεργεία) of God. Neither movement nor self-communication being predicable of the Divine Essence, it is to the Divine Energy, conceived as separable from the Θεότης, that we must ascribe the calling into existence out of nothing of all that is. In virtue of this ἐνεργεία only can God be called Father, as it is by this that all that is, besides Himself, has come into being. Of these creations of the Divine Energy the Son or Logos holds the first place, as the instrumental creator of the world. In this relation likeness to the Father is predicable of the Son. The Son may in this sense be regarded as the express image and likeness of the ἐνεργεία of the Father, as He conferred on Him divine dignity in the power of creation. This made the immeasurable difference between the Son and all other created beings. He was produced by the Father, as an alone Being, the first or most perfect of all Beings, to be, by His will, His instrument in the creation of all other existences. God called Him into being immediately, but all other creatures mediately through Him. This teaching introduced a dualism into the essence of God Himself, when it drew a distinction between His essence and His will—the one being infinite and absolute, and the other relative and limited to finite objects. On the ground of this dualism Eunomius is charged by Gregory Nyssen with Manicheism. Eunomius regarded the Paraclete as sharing in the Divine nature in a still more secondary and derived sense, as no more than the highest and noblest production of the Only-begotten Son, given to be the source of all light and sanctification.
The entire want of spiritual depth and life in Eunomius is shewn by his maintaining that the Divine nature is perfectly comprehensible by the human intellect, and charging those who denied this with an utter ignorance of the first principles of Christianity. He accused them of preaching an unknown God, and even denied their right to be called Christians at all, since without knowledge of God there could be no Christianity; while he denied to those who did not hold his views as to the nature of God and the generation of the Son the possession of any true knowledge of the Divine Being. He held that Christ had been sent to lead other creatures up to God, the primal source of all existence, as a Being external to Himself, and that believers should not stop at the generation of the Son, but having followed Him as far as He was able to lead them, should soar above Him, as above all created beings, whether material or spiritual, to God Himself, the One Absolute Being, as their final aim, that in the knowledge of Him they might obtain eternal life. Eunomius's poor and low idea of the knowledge of God placed it merely in a formal illumination of the understanding and a theoretical knowledge of God and spiritual truth, instead of in that fellowship with God as made known to us in Christ and that knowledge which comes from love, which the church has ever held to be the true life of the soul. In harmony with this formal, intellectual idea of knowledge, as the source of Christian life, Eunomius assigned a lower place to the sacraments than to the teaching of the word, depreciating the liturgical, as compared with the doctrinal, element of Christianity. As quoted by Gregory Nyssen, he asserted that "the essence of Christianity did not depend for its ratification on sacred terms, on the special virtue of customs and mystic symbols, but on accuracy of doctrine" (Greg. Nys. in Eunom. p. 704). For fuller statements of the doctrinal system of Eunomius, see Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i. vol. ii. pp. 264 ff., Clark's trans.; Neander, Ch. Hist. vol. iv. pp. 77 ff., Clark's trans.; Herzog, Real-Encycl. "Eunomius und Eunomianer" (from which works the foregoing account has been derived); Klose, Geschichte und Lehre des Eunomius (1833); Bauer, Dreieinigkeit, i. pp. 365-387; Meyer, Trinitätslehre, pp. 175 ff.; Lange, Arianismus in seiner weiteren Entwickelung.
Eunomius, as a writer, was more copious than elegant. Photius speaks very depreciatingly of his studied obscurity, the weakness of his arguments, and his logical power. Socrates estimates his style no less unfavourably (H. E. iv. 7). Notwithstanding these alleged defects, his writings, which Rufinus states were very numerous and directed against the Christian faith (H. E. i. 25), were much esteemed by his followers, who, according to Jerome, valued their authority more highly than that of the Gospels (Hieron. adv. Vigil. t. ii. p. 123). The bold blasphemies in these books caused their destruction. Successive imperial edicts, one of Arcadius, dated not more than four years after his death a.d. 398 (Cod. Theod. t. vi. p. 152; lib. xvi. 34), commanded that his books should be burnt, and made the possession of any of his writings a capital crime. Little of his writing remains, save some few fragments preserved in the works of his theological adversaries. His Exposition of Faith and his Apologeticus are the only pieces extant of any length.
(1) ἔκθεσις πίστεως, Fidei libellus. A confession of faith presented to Theodosius, a.d. 383 (Socr. H. E. vii. 12), first printed by Valesius in his notes to Socrates, afterwards by Baluze in Conciliorum Nov. Collect. i. 89, and in Fabricius, Biblioth. Graeca, v. 23.
(2) Apologeticus, in 28 sections. This is his most famous work, in which, with much subtlety, he seeks to refute the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, especially the co-eternal and consubstantial divinity of Christ. Basil the Great thought the book worth an elaborate refutation, in five books, adversus Eunomium (Migne, Patr. Gk. xxx. 835). An English trans. was pub. by Whiston in his Eunomianismus Redivivus (Lond. 1711, 8vo).
Cave, Hist. Lit. i. p. 219; Fab. Bibl. Graeca,
